"Asus has a trio of Windows 8 tablets on deck for the holidays, but the pricing is so high - $599 to $1299 for a hybrid - that it's going to be nearly impossible to compete in the marketplace. We were leaked Asus' holiday roadmap and the slide below tells the tale." If this is for real, Windows 8 is screwed in the tablet space. Nobody is going to buy a Windows tablet at prices higher than the iPad.

Until a good tablet comes down to the pricing of a net-book I don't see the need to change over.

No physical keyboard, no USB ports, no full size SD Card slots, no easy way to replace the drive, no ethernet port. All these I have on my net-books, with a battery life of 9+ hours on my Toshiba NB305 ($350) and 6+ on my Acer Aspire One ($215). So what do I gain with these pricey tablets?

PS. And the fact that I can install Haiku-OS on the Intel based net-books makes it a done deal for me.

7 inch screen vs 10 inch on my net-books.
How much working RAM?
4GB of storage? 80GB SSD in my Toshiba, 270GB in my Acer. And like those tablets I can add SD cards and USB external storage at the same time.

Not saying I would not buy a cheap tablet, but I noticed a lack of details about hardware interfaces on most tablets on sale at present.

A EEE 1225B? I got one of the 1215Bs, great little unit. I stuck with the Win HP X64 it came with but with 8Gb of RAM its more like an ultraportable than a netbook and just cost me $350 with the RAM upgrade and a carrying case, just love the thing.

But if they think they are gonna sell Win 8 pads for MORE than an iPad? I wonder if they'd be interested in some magic beans. Apple sells because of branding and Windows has never been and will never be a hip brand, no matter how much Ballmer wants to change that. Windows has ALWAYS sold best on low margin, high volume units only now MSFT has priced themselves out of the market because when you can get a tablet running ICS for $99, who is gonna pay $600+ for a Win 8 one?

A nice 7 inch tablet is good for a lot of things that a netbook isn't.

You can read ebooks on it while easily holding it in one hand. You can load up a bunch of interesting links off your favorite RSS feed to read later on your walk or bus ride. You can play a game while waiting in line at the pharmacy or wherever. You can use it for speaking notes during a presentation.

It just isn't as clumsy and hard to hold as a netbook. It isn't as obviously a computer either so it doesn't look as out of place. It looks more like a pad of notepaper or a book.